I focus on using the Internet, Inside Sales, Lead Generation, Gamification, and Social Media to grow business. I'm also an American who cares enough to speak up and a serial entrepreneur with a short attention span, so I need things to work really fast.

I am the President and Founder of InsideSales.com, the leading sales automation platform for inside sales professionals that I started with Dave Elkington, the other Founder and our amazing CEO, in 2004.

I speak at industry events, research industry topics, and my blog ranks first on ‘inside sales’ where I spend my time giving away (almost) all of our trade secrets www.KenKrogue.com.

Email me at kk@insidesales.com, connect on LinkedIn, follow me on Twitter, or best all, Circle me to access my latest stuff and quick summaries on Google+.

What Is Inside Sales? The Definition Of Inside Sales

Note: I have been asked dozens of times to update the top article on my blog, www.KenKrogue.com, the ranking blog in the world on the industry of inside sales. This is the article that firmly set in place the definition of what is now the fastest growing industry in all of sales and marketing. It is updated slightly with recent developments in the industry. The original has been read 72,667 times. I would appreciate your feedback and comments to these updates. -Ken

The most pragmatic definition of Inside Sales is simple: inside sales is remote sales.

It has been called virtual sales, professional sales done remotely, or one of my recent favorites “sales in the cloud.” Where outside sales or traditional field sales is done face-to-face.

Taken in this context, the majority of all sales is done remotely, and the numbers are growing. The most recent Lead Management study found that over the past three years, inside sales grew at a fifteen times higher rate (7.5% versus .5% annually) over outside sales, to the tune of 800,000 new jobs. (Note, another market size study is underway and should be available shortly.)

More evidence: if you don’t believe it, grab a list of 10 traditional or “outside sales” people and call them. 6 out of 10 will be sitting in front of their computer, working in their cubicle, office, or home office—just like the inside sales people. They may not answer as fast as inside sales reps would, but leave a message and they will call you back. Outside sales is converging into inside sales, or as my friend Bob Perkins, the CEO and Founder of The American Association of Inside Sales Professionals said, “Inside sales is just… sales.”

The term “inside sales” originally came about in the late 1980s as an attempt to differentiate “telemarketing” (or “telesales” in the UK) from the more complex, “high-touch,” phone-based business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) selling practices.

Telemarketing is often believed to have begun in the 1950s by DialAmerica Marketing, Inc., reported to be the first company dedicated to telephone sales and services. By the 1970s telemarketing was a common phrase used to describe the process of selling over the telephone. It often included both outbound and inbound, but later became much more synonymous with the types of outbound calling we’re all familiar with—large-scale “blasts” to lists of names to try and drum up quick sales, usually while the family is sitting around the dinner table.

By the late 1990s/early 2000s, inside sales was the term used to differentiate the practice from outside sales—the traditional face-to-face sales model where salespeople went to the client’s location of business to engage in the sales process.

In 2004, when Dave Elkington and I founded InsideSales.com, we searched the keyword “inside sales” on GoogleGoogle and there was nobody else there. However, there were tens of thousands of companies that came up trying to hire inside sales reps. What was a second class department is now the fastest growing segment of sales and lead generation. With the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP), a viable inside sales industry association in place for five years, inside sales is an industry rapidly maturing.

Companies found the new channel of inside sales to be undeniably effective, but often didn’t know what to do to solve the conflict between the younger, disruptive, more technically savvy upstarts who sold over the phone, and their more senior counterparts who wielded incredible political power in their organizations as the entrenched source of revenue for nearly a century.

For years, inside sales has been relegated to generating leads for the more senior outside sales reps or merely closing the smaller accounts. This is now no longer the case. Many companies are already using a hybrid form of inside sales, with reps calling from their company’s home office, then traveling occasionally to client locations and merely calling it “sales.” Research shows that four years ago, outside sales reps spent 41 percent of their day selling remotely. Two years ago it rose to 46 percent. It is now crossing 50 percent.

By Marc Benioff‘s own admission in his book Behind the Cloud, salesforce.com “grew their company for the first five or six years with a telesales [or inside sales] model.” They added outside sales or field sales to go upmarket when they wanted to sell to Enterprise-class companies, but the company still does a majority of their innovative sales work remotely. We know because we hired Dave Orrico, the Executive Vice President who started the enterprise division of salesforce.com, to join us at InsideSales.com.

True door-to-door field sales is almost extinct, and has of necessity become a hybrid by our definition.

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Do you agree with my assertion? I would value your opinion. The other value of inside sales is a better lifestyle. They can go home at the end of the day, not live on the road (which grows old very fast… speaking from experience.) Thoughts? Ken

Ken, yes I absolutely agree with this assertion. The benefits of inside sales as a sales model are clear. It is a win, win, win! A win for the company, a win for the rep, and a win for the client!

One of the most compelling insights in your article is that field sales rep spend a significant amount of their time engaged in inside sales activities. The single fact validates the inside sales model and its benefits.

Ken – the rest of sales (field, channel, etc.) is starting to look more and more like inside sales in what they do (selling activities) and how they do them (phone/web). There is a well cited Gartner study that something like 80% of interactions between buyers and sellers happen over the phone, not face to face. Further we’re seeing field sales people spending more time every year on ‘inside sales’ like activities than ever before. Screen sharing tools and video conferencing are ubiquitous now. The world is changing…and for the better. You can carry a $2m quota and be home in time for dinner thanks to inside sales.

I think the phone is more and more difficult as the initial medium of a conversation. Social media and email are great to start a conversation, but I recommend you bridge from these passive media to the more active messaging. Ken

I really enjoyed this article, Ken! It has been very interesting to see the industry shift from the field, or outside sales, approach to the remote, inside sales model. It seems that companies are starting to realize that inside sales is far more cost-effective and that reps are able to contact their leads much more efficiently. Thanks for sharing.